Two Roles for a Good Project Manager

Two roles for a good project manager

Generally a project manager as a leader role in the project is widely known by people. However in my experience, the project manager in fact plays two different roles in a project. One is a leader role, which controls all aspects of project, the other one is a buffer role, which is coordination and conflict resolution among the different teams and stakeholders.

In the leader role, risk management is one of the most important parts in all aspects project management. Judging a project manager is good or not mostly basing on whether the project manager could forecast the risk in time and propose the strategies for avoiding or minimizing its risk. Because risk usually will bring a threat which induces the stagnation of project. For example in architectural cases, the common risk in the project is that deliverable is not finished on time or its cost is over than budget. Because, a bit of inefficient implementation would impact the whole schedule of the project. Then the delay of project will affect the schedule of project. What’s more, reducing the project’s profit. Meanwhile it is possible that before the end of project other competitors finish their products and launch them into the market. Thus the rest investing of project becomes the sunk cost. On the other side, over the budget will also lead to stop or close the project. Because the cost in the implementation usually has a great difference with the budget. Although it is a common way for some project managers to reserve a flexible fee, a good project manager could not only reserve a flexible fee which is closer to the future cost, but also control the cost in the implementation by making decision whether the project need to adjustment or using other material and technology. Thus during the project cycle avoiding these risk happened is the key part for a good project manager.

In order to avoiding these risk, in the planning phase, project managers will make a almost comprehensive plan. Likely comparing to other similar project and estimating the project schedule, which includes time, cost, scope. Then, forecasting when it may be having change and reserving enough time for adjustment. As a good project manager, the manager knows when the tasks during the process may need flexible time to change and adjust. Even if when the problem happened, the threat will not influence the whole schedule of project.

In the implementation phase, the risk response approach will transform from avoidance to mitigation or transference. Since monitoring the risk is a effective way in the implementation. Nevertheless in the large project, monitoring the risk is not only the project manager work but also the core team work. Sometimes depending on the different stages, the potential risk is in the different parts, switching the task of monitoring the risk from one person to the whole team members in the project core team will find risk early and reduce risk. In the implementation, the common risk is over the budget. Although in the planning project managers will consider the modifiable cost, changing a core technology still generate a great impact for project cost. For example in the architectural case, using a new material out-planning will effect the cost and at the same time bring unanticipated risk. A good project manager will consider that is it necessary for the project or if using the new technology will bring an extra profit. So the good project manager is able to choose the approach which keep the balance between the cost and the profits when doing the project.  

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